Gourmet Dinner

The newcomers club has a group called the gourmet cooking club.  If you know me, you know that I am no gourmet cook, but the way they do this group is really cool and the food is always really good.  Two or three people plan the dinner...they come up with the theme, menu, and find the recipes... and then they distribute the recipes to the participants.  You have to make one dish and they tell you what to make (half the battle in my opinion) and then you get to enjoy a yummy homemade dinner .  There are more details, obviously, but it's a really fun group to be a part of and gets me in the kitchen a little bit (since my maid does 90% of the cooking right now).  We get together about once every other month.

This month's theme was fall harvest and we had about 20 people attending.  I made the kebobs and, as it sometimes is when I cook, things didn't go quite as planned.  First of all, I couldn't find granny smith apples here, so I had to go with a yellowish apple that was a little softer.  When I put the apples on the kabobs, they split.  We decided to cook the apples seperately in tin foil...problem solved.  Then, James was cooking them on the grill and went to lightly salt and pepper them and the top of the pepper came off, so half the kebobs were pretty peppery.  THEN, I grabbed a bottle of wine out of our bar to take with us and it slipped out of my hand.  This was about 5 minutes before we were due to leave and our house is all tile...not very forgiving!  There was glass (and wine) shattered in a million pieces all over the kitchen.  I still can't believe we haven't come across a piece I missed. 

 Some of the ladies with the main course (Anna, Kim, Deidre,

Maureen, Lynda, Sarah A, Sarah B, and me)

The desserts!